Chinoiserie Imitation of or influence by Chinese artforms, first appearing in the 17th century and lasting into the 19th. Architecturally this was expressed in landscaping, teahouses, pavilions and pagodas, notably the Great Pagoda, Kew Gardens, London (1759).
Enlightenment Also the Age of Enlightenment/Reason, this was an intellectual movement beginning in the late 17th century and lasting into the 18th, dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the reform of society on ‘enlightened’ lines.
Hindoo style A form of Orientalism, principally, although not exclusively, in Britain that found favour during the 19th century as European involvement in India widened. It makes use of Indian motifs and detailing, and can be seen in such buildings as the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, UK (1823). Can also refer to the Indo-Gothic architecture of British architects in India, which mixed indigenous elements with imported Gothic Revival, as exemplified by the Chhatrapati Shivaji (formerly Victoria) Terminus, Mumbai (1888).
in-situ concrete One of two methods of fabricating reinforced concrete for slab building, the in-situ concrete method is when the liquid concrete is poured into forms on the building site, that is, ‘in situ’. The second method, precast concrete, is where building components are manufactured off-site and transported ready-made to the building site for assembly.
Independent Group An interdisciplinary group of British artists and architects that challenged the Modernist hegemony of the day and advocated a fusion of popular and high art and culture, adopting an ‘as found’ philosophy. They took a radical approach to visual culture, using sources ranging from science-fiction magazines to Hollywood to the work of Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. The principal architectural contributions came from the husband-and-wife team of Alison and Peter Smithson.
Japonism A form of Orientalism popular in the 19th century that found inspiration in Japanese artforms. In architecture, Japanese influence can be seen in the work of the likes of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland and Frank Lloyd Wright in America.
Jugendstil ‘Young style’, the German name for Art Nouveau.
Modernismo The Spanish name for Art Nouveau – also known as Modernisme in Catalan, Barcelona being the main centre of the movement in Spain, particularly the works of Antoni Gaudí.
Orientalism A broad term used in the history of art and architecture to describe Western artworks that show influences from the Orient – which could mean anywhere ranging from the Middle East right through to Japan. In architecture, the Hindoo style started to be seen in the late 18th century, and other styles included Chinoiserie, Japonism, Turquerie, Egyptian Revival and Indo-Gothic. The term has acquired more negative connotations in recent decades, particularly since Edward Saïd’s 1978 book Orientalism, which saw it as a symptom of Western imperialism rooted in ‘exoticism’ and notions of cultural superiority.
postcolonial theory An exploration of how the world – and in particular previously colonized peoples and their former imperial rulers – can progress in a postcolonial era, culturally and politically, on a more equal basis. See also Orientalism.
Stile Floreale ‘Floral style’, the Italian name for Art Nouveau. Also known as Stile Liberty after Liberty & Co., a department store in London whose designers helped to popularize the style.
sunburst An ornamental motif in which ‘rays’ burst out from a central disk, so resembling sunbeams. Found in Baroque architecture and also a feature of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.
Team X Group of architects that first assembled at the ninth CIAM conference in 1953, eventually presiding over its demise in 1959. Gave rise both to the New Brutalism movement in Britain and to the Structuralists in the Netherlands.
The Baroque was a development of Classicism in which the rules of ancient precedent became subject to highly inventive, even organic, treatment. Michelangelo was one of the first to play with the elements of Roman architecture, subverting them in a style now known as Mannerism, but the Baroque adopted a more fluid language than earlier styles, deploying ellipses, interpenetrating curves, optical illusions and other complex geometries. Beginning in Italy, the style reached central Europe (Bavaria and Bohemia especially), France, Spain and Spain’s South American colonies. It appeared in England, largely through the work of Wren and Hawksmoor, but the inventiveness of even these architects is eclipsed by the theatricality and daring of the Italians Francesco Borromini and Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini is perhaps best known for his sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa (1652), but his elliptical church Sant’Andrea al Quirinale (1670) in Rome is one of his finest achievements. His contemporary Borromini explored the architectural possibilities of complex mathematics, including the counterpointing of convex/concave to create an impression of movement. The Baroque triggered the 18th-century Rococo style, which added scrollwork and marine motifs such as shells to the palette of decorative elements.
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The term Baroque describes the exuberant architectural and sculptural styles of the 17th–18th centuries, where formalism became replaced by freer expression and experimentation.
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The Baroque is not confined to the period of the Enlightenment, as it made a brief reappearance in Britain between around 1890 and 1910 in what some call the ‘Wrenaissance’. It could also be argued that the spirit of the period’s aesthetic and structural inventiveness can be seen in the work of Spain’s Antoni Gaudí and even the work of today’s architects, using computer-generated parametric design tools to evolve complex, fluid and daring forms.
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GIOVANNI LORENZO BERNINI
1598–1680
Italian sculptor, architect and painter key to the development of Roman Baroque
FRANCESCO BORROMINI
1599–1667
Italian Baroque architect concerned with geometric intricacies
NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR
1661–1736
English Baroque architect
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David Littlefield
Baroque architecture adds an experimental, and often complex, exuberance to Classical precedents.
Orientalism grew from the exploration of the Middle East and Asia by Europeans. Artefacts and stories brought back from afar excited a curiosity and hunger in Europe for these mysterious cultures. Different Asian styles have often been highly fashionable, appearing in various forms of cultural and artistic expression throughout Europe for centuries. Painters, textile designers, potters, furniture-makers and architects incorporated the imagery and styles of the Orient into their work. There were various sources from which Western architects found inspiration, but trade and empire made India, China and, later, Japan the most important. Chinoiserie, the Chinese strand within Orientalism, was most popular in the mid-18th century, with Japonism, Japanese-influenced designs, a century later. The ‘Hindoo style’ remained a popular architectural reference throughout much of the 19th century. Architecturally, Orientalism can be seen in the adoption of all kinds of ornate features, from towering minarets to upturned eaves. Notable English examples include the Great Pagoda in Kew Gardens (1759), London, designed by Sir William Chambers, the Royal Pavilion (1823) in Brighton by John Nash for the Prince Regent and, in the USA, Gamble House (1909) by Greene & Greene in California.
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As a style, Orientalism took inspiration from the panoply of ‘exotic’ cultures of the East – once known as the Orient – from North Africa to Japan.
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Orientalism’s popularity has fluctuated over time. It experienced a brief renaissance in the 1930s, and even inspired great Modernists such as Frank Lloyd Wright. However, many commentators have been highly disparaging. Writers Horace Walpole (1717–97) and William Mason (1725–97) vehemently criticized Chambers’s chinoiserie, and today Orientalism is associated in a largely negative way with the postcolonial theory expounded by the intellectual Edward Saïd dealing with the West’s exploitation of the East.
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SIR WILLIAM CHAMBERS
1723–96
British architect and a champion of chinoiserie
SAMUEL PEPYS COCKERELL
1754–1827
British architect
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
1867–1959
American architect famously inspired by Japanese design
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Edward Denison
Inspired by decorative forms in the manifold cultures from north Africa to the far East, Orientalism found expression in art, crafts, design and architecture.
The term ‘Art Nouveau’ (as the style became known in Belgium, France, Britain and the USA) first appeared in 1904 as the title for a collection of essays by professional architects, artists and craftsmen published by the London periodical The Magazine of Art. The main attributes of Art Nouveau’s colourful architectural language can be seen in the architectural elements and fittings that were applied to buildings – including doors, windows, wall applications, railings and banisters – rather than a building’s structure. The style was also known as Jugendstil in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia, Modernismo in Spain, and Stile Floreale in Italy, all of which reflect the vibrant, playful and floral elements that it displayed. Among the influences on the development of Art Nouveau architecture were the 19th-century emphasis on ‘new’ materials such as iron and glass, but also the desirability of making structure visible, as espoused by French architect and theorist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc – with his emphasis on ‘sinewy’ architecture to achieve a lighter structure – and some of the ‘organic’ designs by US skyscraper pioneer Louis Sullivan. Among the most distinguished architectural examples of the style is Victor Horta’s Tassel House (1893), Brussels, Belgium.
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Art Nouveau was a style of decorative arts and architecture inspired by nature and employing curvaceous organic forms and lines that flourished from 1890 to 1910.
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Art Nouveau is often interpreted either as a decorative style (one that has had no influence on modern architecture) or an artistic movement that emerged from specific cultural and temporal contexts. Either way, Art Nouveau’s variety of different aesthetic approaches, from formal geometric structures to looser naturalistic forms and patterns, suggests it transcended mere stylistic concerns and represented a legitimate expression of architecture.
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VICTOR HORTA
1861–1947
Belgian designer and key European Art Nouveau architect
HENRY VAN DE VELDE
1863–1957
Belgian painter, architect and pioneer of Art Nouveau style
HECTOR GUIMARD
1867–1942
French practitioner of Art Nouveau, whose works include the entrances to the Paris Métro
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Dragana Cebzan Antic
Curvaceous forms were inspired by different configurations of plants in Art Nouveau.
The International Style emerged in the late 1920s, during the early decades of Modernist architecture. The term was coined by American art historian Alfred H. Barr, and it derives from an acknowledgment of a common aesthetic preference for rational or functional architectural design, as well as from the book International Architecture (1925) by Walter Gropius. Barr characterized the style as emphasizing the volume of the space (space being enclosed by thin planes or surfaces) and not mass and solidity, regularity and not symmetry, a reduction of ornament, use of high-quality materials, fine proportion and a radical simplification of form. The style can be also defined by its adoption of glass, steel and concrete as materials of choice. Contributions to this design philosophy are also in its acceptance of industrialized mass-production techniques, the transparency of buildings and the genuine expression of structure. The ideals of the International Style can be expressed in the slogans that marked this architectural period: ‘ornament is a crime’, ‘form follows function’, ‘truth to materials’ and Le Corbusier’s statement that a house is a ‘machine for living’.
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‘International Style’ is the term used to describe a style of Modernist architecture that flourished across the world in the early 20th century.
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In 1932 Alfred H. Barr, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson organized a seminal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in which American architects and the public could see examples of architectural developments in Germany, France, Belgium and Holland, as well as the abstract rationalism of De Stijl. One outcome of this was the influential book The International Style by Hitchcock and Johnson, which contained works of exhibited architects.
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LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE
1886–1969
German-American architect, one of the pioneers of modern architecture
WALTER GROPIUS
1883–1969
German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School
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Dragana Cebzan Antic
‘International style’ was a term coined by Hitchcock and Johnson to elaborate emerging European modern architecture, later used in a broader context to include the ubiquitous glass box buildings.
The name ‘Art Deco’ to describe the prevailing style of the 1920s and 1930s derived from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris. However, it was a retrospective term – Hilary Gelson coined it in The Times (London) in 1966 to describe the resurgence of interest in it at that time, and it was further popularized following the 1968 publication of Art Deco of the 20s and 30s by Bevis Hillier. Designers and architects working in the style – characterized by non-functional decorative details, ‘sunburst’ patterns and expressive and energetic motifs – saw in it a vision of a pleasurable world, decadent even, unspoiled by war and human hardship. It featured symmetrical, geometric, and angular architectural compositions. Its architects and designers were influenced by cultures that made use of geometrical styles, including Japanese, Mayan and Aztec. Hollywood popularized it – movies featured Deco-styled movie sets and elaborate costumes to reflect the industry’s vibrancy and modernity – and gave it truly international appeal. The Second World War and the austerity of its aftermath brought an end to Art Deco, although it enjoyed a brief revival in the 1980s.
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Art Deco is a style in architecture and design defined by geometrical shapes, symmetrical design and stylized natural forms that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Art Deco used state-ofthe-art materials (including aluminium, glass, stainless steel, chrome and the new plastics) and motif repetition to achieve simplicity of form. Its aesthetic attributes were in marked contrast to the asymmetrical and curvilinear Art Nouveau style, but, along with Art Nouveau, Art Deco was frequently criticized and even despised by Modernists, who deemed it ‘decadent’ because of its dependence upon decoration and ornamentation.
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WILLIAM VAN ALEN
1883–1954
American architect, and designer of the Chrysler Building, New York
SHREVE, LAMB & HARMON
American architectural firm that designed the Empire State Building, New York
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Dragana Cebzan Antic
Art Deco buildings present a reaction to the reduction of ornamentation in Modernist buildings.
The New Brutalism was an architectural movement that sprang out of the ideas of the Independent Group, a young faction who would meet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in the early 1950s. The main architectural protagonists, Alison and Peter Smithson, were searching for a new ethic and aesthetic for the reconstruction of a welfare-state Britain. They were at the centre of an avant-garde group at the London County Council architects’ department that was inspired by the expressive concrete phase of Le Corbusier. During the postwar austerity years, the most obvious expression of this more ‘honest’ architecture was unfinished materials and exposed services and structure. Fuelled by the support of the main British architectural magazines, Architectural Design and Architectural Review, the New Brutalism became the standard style for the most ambitious local government reconstruction projects in British cities such as Sheffield, Coventry and London, but also found keen interpretations in the USA, Holland and Japan. As an avant-garde movement, Brutalism was over by the time Reyner Banham wrote its history in 1966, but as a style it continued well into the 1970s, finding one of its most enduring images in Boston’s City Hall, completed in 1969.
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Despite its name, Brutalist architecture has nothing to do with brutality, but is derived from the French brut, meaning ‘raw’ or ‘unrefined’.
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Brutalist architecture is often used as a derogatory term and is associated with poor-quality 1960s concrete housing and shopping centres. However, it was employed successfully for a wide variety of architectural solutions from civic centres to cultural and university buildings. As well as the use of raw materials such as in-situ concrete and exposed brick, Brutalism’s other key characteristics are asymmetrical, sculptural forms and the separation of vehicular and pedestrian circulation.
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ALISON & PETER SMITHSON
1928–93 & 1923–2003
British architects, members of the postwar Independent Group and founding members of Team X
SIR DENYS LASDUN
1914–2001
British architect most famous for London’s National Theatre
PAUL RUDOLPH
1918–1997
American architect, former Dean of Yale School of Architecture
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Steve Parnell
Boston City Hall exemplifies Brutalist architecture, using exposed concrete for its structure and monumental, but sculptural, aesthetic.
Ieoh Ming Pei is one of the great Modernist architects of public and civic spaces. His work creates spaces where people can move around unimpeded and integrate, learn and create: libraries, museums, art galleries, council buildings, medical centres, sports halls, educational buildings, research buildings, concert halls, corporate offices and banks. His work can be seen all over the USA, as well as in India, China, Japan and Europe.
Born in China, the son of a banker, Pei arrived in the USA at 18 to study Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Unimpressed by the old-school teaching, he transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study Architectural Engineering. At the same time he discovered Le Corbusier’s work and his architectural theory. At MIT Pei was encouraged to return to architecture studies, which he did but retained in his approach a successful integration of functioning structure and aesthetic, engineering, and art. Pei’s ideas were reinforced by his mentor at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Walter Gropius, and by the early 1950s his signature style – a more humane form of Modernism – was established. His preferred materials are glass, concrete, stone, wood and steel, and his designs are based on clean lines and timeless geometric forms, the whole seamlessly and harmoniously blending into its surroundings. Pei believes that architecture should mirror nature and is unafraid to express himself in large buildings erected for the pleasure and use of many – for example, he was one of the first architects to use the glazed atrium and the piazza to provide a modern solution to the articulation of large public spaces.
His talents have attracted influential patrons. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis chose his design for the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, and the then French President François Mitterrand commissioned Pei to provide one of the most controversial of his Grands Projets, an intervention at the Louvre. In both instances Pei’s design more than rose to the occasion, the Louvre in particular. His timeless glass-pyramid design is an elegant solution that works for the museum’s existing buildings and the people who use them and is now an iconic site of Paris.
Pei’s architectural genius and influence has not gone unrecognized. He is the recipient of almost every architectural honour there is, including the illustrious Pritzker Prize, and is still working today in his nineties.
Born in Guangzhou (Canton), China
1934
Emigrated to the USA.
1946
Master of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design
1948–55
Director of Architecture at Webb & Knapp, a real-estate development company
1952–4
Awarded a Travelling Scholarship from Harvard and visited France, Italy and Greece
1955–66
Founding Partner of I. M. Pei and Associates
1956
The Mile High Center, Denver, Colorado, became his first major independent commission
1961
Designed the Mesa Laboratory for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado
1968–78
Worked on the East Building of the National Art Gallery, Washington, DC
1979
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston, completed
1979
Awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the highest architectural honour in the USA.
1981–9
The Glass Pyramid, Louvre, Paris, Phases I and II, constructed
1982
Designed the Fragrant Hill Hotel, Beijing, China
1983
Awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize
1989
Designed the Bank of China, Hong Kong
1989
Designed the Morton H. Myerson Symphony Center, Dallas, Texas
1993
Designed the Four Seasons Hotel, New York
1995
Designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio
1997
Designed the Miho Museum, Shigaraki, Kyoto, Japan
2001–9
Worked on the Macao Science Center, Macao, China
